A History of Wild Places(2)

The woman makes a half-interested snort, the scent of cigarette smoke puffing out from her pores—a salty, ashen smell that reminds me of a case I took out in Ohio three years back, searching for a missing kid who had been holed up inside an abandoned two-story house out behind a run-down RV park, where the walls had the same stench—salt and smoke—like it had been scrubbed into the daffodil and fern wallpaper.

“Everyone around here’s heard of Maggie St. James,” the woman answers with a gruff snort, wrinkling her stubby nose and looking up at me from the nicotine-yellow whites of her eyes. “You from a newspaper?”

I shake my head.

“A cop?”

I shake my head again.

But she doesn’t seem to care. Either way, cop or reporter, she keeps talking. “A woman goes missing and this place turns into a damn spectacle, like a made-for-TV movie—helicopters and search dogs were swarming up in those woods, found a whole heap of nothing. Searched through folks’ garbage cans and garages, asking questions like the whole community was in on something, like we knew what happened to that missing woman but weren’t saying.” She crosses her arms—all bony angles and loose, puckered skin, like a snake slowly shedding her useless outer layer from her skeleton. “We’re honest people ’round here, tell ya what we think even if you don’t ask. Those police made people paranoid, creeping around at night with their flashlights, peeking into decent folks’ windows. Most of us didn’t leave our homes for weeks; cops had us believing there was a murderer out there, snatching people up. But it was all for nothing. They never turned up a damn thing. And all for some woman who we didn’t even know.” At this she nods her head, lips pursed together, as if to punctuate the point.

The locals in this town might not have known who Maggie St. James was when she turned up in their community then promptly vanished, but a lot of people outside of here did. Maggie St. James had gained notoriety some ten years ago when she wrote a children’s book titled Eloise and the Foxtail: Foxes and Museums. What followed were four more books, and some fierce public backlash that her stories were too dark, too grisly and sinister, and that they were inspiring kids to run away from home and venture into nearby woodlands and forests, searching for something called the underground—a fictional location she wrote about in the series. The underground was supposed to turn ordinary kids into something unnatural—a dark, villainous creature. One quote in particular from a noted literary journal said, St. James’s take on the modern fairy tale is more nightmares than dreams, stories to make your children fear not just the dark, but the daylight, too. I wouldn’t read this to a serial killer, let alone to my child.

Shortly after her fifth book was published, a fourteen-year-old boy named Markus Sorenson ventured deep into the Alaskan wilderness in search of this underground and died from hypothermia. His body was found seven days later. I remember the case because I got a call from a detective up in Anchorage, asking if I might come up and see if I could assist in finding the boy. But they found him at the entrance to a small rocky cave the following day, skin whiter than the surrounding snowfall. I wondered if in those final moments, when the delirium of cold began to make him hallucinate, did he think he had found the underground?

After the boy’s death, Maggie St. James just sort of slipped into obscurity—with good reason. According to Wikipedia, there was a planned sixth book in the Eloise and the Foxtail series. A book that would never be written, because the author, Maggie St. James, vanished.

“Do you remember her stopping here?” I ask the woman, whose pale blue veins are tightening beneath the waxy skin of her throat.

She raises an eyebrow at me, as if I’ve offended her in suggesting that she might not remember such a thing after five years. I know Maggie St. James stopped at the Timber Creek Gas & Grocery because it was in the police report, as well as a statement from a cashier who was not named. “She was unmemorable at best,” the woman answers, what’s left of her thinning eyelashes fluttering closed then open again, dark mascara clotting at the corners. “But lucky for the police, and you, I remember everyone.” She glances to the oily storefront windows—snow spiraling against the glass—as if the memory were still there, just within reach. “She got gas and bought a pack of strawberry bubble gum, tore open the package and started chewing it right there, before she’d even paid for it. Then she asked about a red barn. Asked if I knew where she could find one around here. Of course, I told her about the old Kettering place a few miles on up the road. Said it was nearly collapsed, a place kids go to drink, and hadn’t been properly used in twenty years. I asked her what she wanted with that old place, but she wouldn’t say. She left without even a thanks, then drove off. They found her car the next morning, abandoned.” She snuffs, turning her face back to the windows, and I get the sense she wants to make some comment about how rude city folk can be, but catches herself just in case I might be city folk. Even though I’m not. And from what I knew of Maggie St. James, she wasn’t either.

I clear my throat, hoping there might be more beneath the surface of her memory if I can ask the right question and pry it loose. “Have you heard anyone talk about her in the years since?” I ask, tiptoeing around the thing I really want to ask. “Someone who saw her, who remembers something?”

“Someone who remembers killing her, you mean?” She unfolds her arms, mouth tugging strangely to one side.